


The Will of the Almighty

by Tammany



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-29 02:43:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19820905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: This is just an odd little view of the Apocalapse and its aftermath largely from the POV of the Heavenly Host, with a few conjectures slipped in regarding what God as I prefer to imagine Her may really be up to.There's an Easter Egg cameo in there. If you're a Pratchett fan, see if you spot it.





	The Will of the Almighty

Revelations 8

1.When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. 2. And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and they were given seven trumpets.

There was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Six of God's highest angels were eyeing the table that held their trumpets on display. Their wings twitched and they shuffled from one foot to the other. Gabriel, they all knew, was going to get the great trumpet of beaten gold, but the rest each wondered who was getting the other options. There was a beauty of rose gold, shimmering and warm in heaven’s cool, impersonal amphitheater. Another of crystal glimmered, seeming to sound its note before lip touched mouthpiece or breath was drawn. It was starting—the big day. The War to End All Wars. The one to settle the thing once and for all.

The excitement was almost tangible. Among the ranks of the cherubim the multiplicity of wings and eyes and smoke was getting entirely out of hand. The conductors of the nine great choirs were poised, ready for the moment the batons would swing, pause, and point, and the thousands would open their throats in one mighty Hosanna.

The seconds ticked by. The angels at the altar did some fire-collecting and some censing. The end of the world was, after all, an occasion for all the smells and bells. No low-church hurly-burly for Armageddon, thank you very much. All that was left to do was some smiting and some hurling of the censer, and some thunder and lightning, and then Gabriel would be off to start it all, and everyone would rally, and they’d be off!

Except the seconds ticked by…

And ticked by…

And the “space of half an hour” started looking more like forty-five minutes to an hour, and it wasn’t like you could complain to the management and get a free pizza, was it? Then Gabriel went off with a vast and mighty clap of wings. And Metatron, that old geezer, started reciting Genesis, as though hearing about the beginning might reduce the hunger for Revelations—the end. The End.

“What’s up?” One of the younger angels, recently retired from an earthly career in Bible sales asked an older, more experienced neighbor in the ranks. Both were originally humans, and far too aware that in the minds of real angels—angels by creation rather than by mortal advancement—they were not angels at all, but ghosts granted premature entry into the halls of heaven.

The other shook her head. She’d been with her choir since the eighteen hundreds, and was a bit less green than her companion, but in truth, she found heaven confusing, and not much as she’d heard it preached by Humphrey Jones and David Morgan in Tre'r Ddôl in 1859. Sometimes she found herself humming “Love Vast As The Ocean,” hungering for the warm, welcoming heaven she’d been promised.

After a silence of about two hours and ten minutes Gabriel reappeared with a huge crack, smelling of an unsettling blend of Earthly and Hellish scents. There was a trace of brimstone, and a small scattering of flies seemed to have accompanied him in his transportation.

Flies. In heaven. The buzz could be heard in every sphere, zzzzing its way to every choir. A collective gasp rose up.

Gabriel’s visage was dark—almost hellish in his rage.

“Stand down,” he shouted. “Forces of Heaven, Ye ranks of Angels, stand down!”

A roar of objection rose up.

Michael, arrayed in her armor, armed with the lance with which she once slew the dragon, demanded an explanation, her zeal as bright as her halo. “The Apocalypse is Come. We are called to arms! The End is Written: why should we stand down?” And, in a quieter, hissing voice, “Gabriel, what in God’s own name is this? Is it that runty little collaborator?”

Gabriel shot her a glowering glance. “Not now. Yes. Later.” Then he raised his voice and shouted to all the gathered ranks, “Armageddon is…called. On account of…weather. The seas are not…not rising on schedule. The field of Megiddo is rained out. Mud everywhere. Satan and God must negotiate another date for the fulfillment of time.”

The silence that rolled back was that of stunned disbelief. The game was called? The war—the Great War to End All Wars was delayed? God and Satan had to negotiate a…a…raincheck? No.

“NO!” There was anguish in the roar that rose up, as the forces of heaven were balked in their fury. “NO!”

Gabriel bridled, and glowered, and shouted, “It is as God wills it!”

He disappeared, then, in a mighty clap of wings, and moments later Michael, Uriel, and Sandalphon followed.

It was hours and hours and hour after that before silence had a hope of a dream of a chance in heaven. The only consolation was that everyone knew it had to be worse in hell.

***

“At least it must be worse in hell,” Michael snarled, pacing like an enraged leopardess through Gabriel’s cavernous, sterile office.

“Don’t be stupid,” Gabriel snarled back. “They’re demons. No matter how much they may hope they will win, in the end their leader is Satan—not God. And Satan’s just had his own son blow a raspberry at him—and get away with it. No one’s under any illusion as to who the first, the ultimate, the original Creator of the Universe is, or who Wrote what is Written. They won’t be that surprised that Satan’s will is not prevailing. But…they’re going to be right there with all of us.” He met Michael’s eyes, then. His own for the first time showed anguish. “What does it mean, Michael? What does it mean that God’s own will has been set aside by two collaborating agents gone native and an eleven-year-old boy who’s not even Satanic—by his own choice?”

The room settled, Uriel and Sandalphon and Michael joining Gabriel in contemplation of the enormity of it.

“The ineffable plan,” Uriel said, sampling the notion. “The ineffable plan may…may not…may not be the written plan? It may not be the Great Plan?” She sounded on the verge of tears.

“It can’t be,” Sandalphon sniveled. “It is the Great Plan. The Written Plan. God could not wish Her will to be subverted.”

“But—there was Eden,” Michael said, dread in her voice. “The mortal man and woman overthrew God’s will and were turned out of Eden and condemned to sin and the wages of sin and to damnation eternal. Except… God forgave. And it turns out that their sin was…” her voice squirmed. “Their sin was **_Written._** It was all part of the Great Plan. It was just…ineffable.”

“Ineffable,” the others murmured, stricken. What was written was not always clear, and God’s will was not always as it seemed.

“No.” Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. “God does not play games with the universe—and even if She does,” he added, with a bitter backward thought aimed at Crowley at Tadfield, “She does not play games with her angels. Or not,” he added, with another rageful thought aimed at the memory of Aziraphale, “She does not play games with her highest angels. There shall be a reckoning, before the New End of Days.”

Soon it seemed clear to those gathered, that before they could move on they had to reckon with those who had balked the Great Plan. Once the angel, the demon, the AntiChrist and the Them were gone, heaven and hell could move again to accomplish the End Times.

And so the arrangements were made with hell itself, with Beelzebub’s fierce cleverness and Gabriel’s fury combining to fulfill their plan. The holy water was arranged. The hellfire gathered and contained. The forces of both good and evil prepared to assault Tadfield and rip the rebel children from existence.

Instead?

“What are they?” Gabriel whispered into his little cell phone. “Belzy, what are they?”

“It izzzzzz not written,” Beelzebub responded, her voice shaken with dismay. “They prezzzzume to challenge heaven and hell together. They muzzzzzt be demolissssssssshed.” She didn’t sound confident, though.

“The demon—he endured holy water? You’re sure?”

“We destroyed one of our own first, to be sure. And the hellfire?”

“Our angel _blew_ it at us. Like a dragon. It was…” Gabriel did not go on, unwilling to admit the terror that had risen up in him at the sight of Aziraphale in the hellfire, eyes glowing, flames torching from his open maw….

They were silent for a moment, and then Gabriel added, “And we couldn’t even approach Tadfield. It’s not sane. The boy gave up status as his father’s son. He can’t be holding us off. Can he?”

“It izzzzz a paradoxxxxzzzz,” Beelzebub grumbled. “He muzzzzzzt be both: mortal and immortal, sszzzon of a human father, and szzzzon of Szzzatan alssssso.”

“Impossible!” Gabriel snarled—ignoring the fact that it was also literally true, and true for thousands of adopted children, including all those humans “adopted” into heaven by God’s actions to forgive them. Adoption did not undo birth, but it trumped it—if the child so chose.

He scowled.

No. It was wrong. Adam could not be both. Human and devil? And Aziraphale and Crowley—they couldn’t share natures! Could they?

Somewhere in heaven, a wise man looked up and grinned, eyes crinkling in glee, and quoted himself, saying “It is the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.” He knew, if Gabriel did not, that the impossible was the place where it all came together, and heaven and hell gave way to the human soul.

Gabriel and Beelzebub never heard it, though.

“It is wrong,” both said, and proceeded to plan new attempts at subversion.

“After all,” Gabriel later told Michael as the jogged their third lap around the rings of Saturn, “It’s God’s will. It is written.”

God, who oversees it all, heard and smiled. Her hand was cradled over a little town called Tadfield, and over an angel and a demon who were becoming more alike than even they understood, and they were safe in her keeping.

For God moves in mysterious ways, Her wonders to perform, and “ineffable” is the first word on Her calling card.


End file.
